Mindless violence and mindless responses in the UK

I am reluctant to call the recent outbreaks of violent disorder in the UK riots, because I associate riots with outbursts of frustration by the relatively powerless at some aspect of the way society is being governed. The recent looting and destruction, however, had no political content. The initial outburst of destructive anger at the killing of Mark Duggan by the police was a riot. The protest by the Duggan family and friends demanding an explanation for the killing and for the fact that they learned about his death from the news media ('in a report designed to deflect blame for the killing onto the victim') was a political protest. The stonewalling by the police led to the understandable frustration and anger of the protesters. I agree with James Heartfield's assessment that any political dimension which may have been there initially quickly gave way to looting. Any of the attempts to read a political response into the looting are fantasy. These events bear little resemblance to the riots of the 1980s. Even attempts to put them in the context of austerity seem to be too facile.

When the UK government attempted to restore their authority through getting the courts to impose tough penalties on those involved in the looting I did wonder where they were going to put all those being charged. Now it appears that no-one in government has thought through the consequences of getting tough. The thinking of government seems to be like that of the looters, 'act now, and think about the consequences later'.

The most interesting pieces on the response to urban disorder have been those which point to various ways in which state interventions have contributed to the violence, and the state's response is likely to exacerbate the problems further.

Josie Appleton, for example, points out that:

'Criminal justice has lost its moral distinctions, between innocent and guilty, crime and normality... Criminal justice becomes a blanket business of ‘behaviour management’ - monitoring and meddling with everyone, but never really condemning or intervening. This lack of interest in culpability is embodied in ASBOs. These orders prevent a gang member from wearing insignia or a thief from going to a gym (that is, the incidental behaviour), rather than broaching the actual crime, or addressing in any way the individual’s inner life or moral orientation'.

The authorities, Appleton points out, have vast powers to intervene, but these are used to police petty forms of behaviour (such as 'inappropriate dress'), normal social interaction (such as friends drinking alcohol on the beach or in a park) or positive forms of behaviour (such as postering for community events in public spaces which have not been one of the few places to be officially sanctioned - in the UK 'public' is increasingly coming to mean state regulated, rather than social space which is free from state interference).

Jennie Bristow points to the calls for more parenting classes as a solution to breakdown in social order. And points out that in the UK today:

'Good parenting' has become far more about ensuring that your children aren't fat and are happy - criteria on which parents are continually judged by those in authority - than on raising them to be decent, morally autonomous citizens as they approach adulthood. No wonder some kids think the world owes them everything: that's what their parents have been taught to teach them.

Brendan O'Neill points out that what unites those who want tough sentencing and those who want more parenting classes is that they involve external interference in the name of helping local communities. While the authoritarian dimension of 'hang-em and flog-em' demands are obvious, the softly-softly approach is not so evidently authoritarian. Both, however, undermine the idea that we are capable of looking after ourselves.

the very problem in rundown urban communities is the surfeit of ‘external solutions’, the surfeit of welfarism and authoritarian measures and do-gooding initiatives that have been imposed from without in recent years. A tsunami of economic, political and therapeutic programmes has had the effect of severely undermining community bonds and social solidarity in many areas. The welfarisation of people’s lives, where their every basic need is met by faceless bureaucrats who simply want to keep people ticking over, has undercut both the spirit of self-reliance and the trend for community solidarity. The imposition of everything from CCTV cameras to anti-social behaviour orders, alongside the society-wide questioning of adult authority over children, has undermined communities’ ability to deal with bad behaviour through their own initiative and with their own resources. The introduction of ceaseless parenting advice and classes for poor and allegedly feckless families has even torn the bond between parent and child, replacing the authority of the mother and father with the apparently superior authority of the ‘parenting expert’.

Parenting classes, CCTV, ASBOs, unemployment therapy and a whole host of other ways in which the state intrudes in the everyday life of ordinary people are part of the problem, not part of the solution.